Cameron broke the seal and began to read. He was only partway down the first page when he jumped to his feet. Racing through the door, he shouted an apology over his shoulder to the man he had struck in the doorway. Looking both ways along the street, he knew he had no time to lose … or he could lose everything.
Donald fingered the tail of his kite and whined, “But, Aunt Tess, today is the day we are supposed to play with Ned Wainger at his house.”
“I know.”
“He is leaving by the week’s end for his father’s estate somewhere in the country.” Donald folded his short arms over his chest. His frown made him resemble his uncle more than ever. “You promised I could show him my kite before he left.”
“That was before you were knocked off your feet by that horse.” She looked out the door of the nursery again, although she had not heard any footfalls. How long would it take Cameron to complete this errand? With each passing minute, the wounds between them festered. She wanted to apologize for Heddy’s misdeeds, and she longed to hear him say he was sorry, too. She dared to believe he would give her a chance to speak of the love she could no longer push out of her mind or her heart.
Donald slid from the bed to the floor, struggling to hide his grimace as he brushed his injured leg against the covers. “Please, Aunt Tess. I will not be wild-acting.”
“Wild-acting?”
“That is what Mrs. Detloff says,” interjected Philip, “when we are ramb—ramb—”
“Rambunctious?” she asked, smiling. These little boys somehow had found their way into her heart, as well, and they soothed its anguish. She held out her hands to them. “Very well. We shall make a brief call on your friend.” When Donald opened his mouth to cheer, she raised her hands to her lips. “No wild-acting, remember?”
As the boys pulled on their shoes, Tess asked for the carriage to be brought around. She went to tell Mrs. Detloff she was taking the boys out. The governess offered to come along, but Tess urged her to remain in bed for the rest of the afternoon. A lump on the side of Mrs. Detloff’s head showed where she had struck it on a step when she had suffered her crise de nerfs and fainted.
Tess listened to the boys chattering like two blackbirds while she tied her bonnet under her chin. They did not pause even as they gathered up their brightly colored kites and went down the stairs.
“Harbour,” she said when the butler held the door for them, “let His Grace know, if he returns before we do, that we are visiting the Waingers’ household. We shall not be long.”
The butler was scowling. “Your Grace, I heard His Grace say—”
“We shall not be long,” Tess repeated, not wanting to be scolded by the butler for not remaining here as Cameron had asked.
With the tiger’s help, she assisted the little boys into the closed carriage. She handed the two kites to the boys. When Philip let out a cry when the tail of his caught on the edge of the step and tore, Tess told him to wait while she went in and got some material to fix it.
“By the time we get to Ned’s house,” she said, “it will be as good as new.”
She hurried into the house. Waving aside Harbour’s offer to get the small basket of supplies Mrs. Detloff always carried with her whenever she took the boys out, Tess retrieved it from the nursery. She was rushing too quickly down the steps, and several wooden spools fell out. With the tiger’s help, she gathered them up and put them back into the basket.
When she was sitting beside the boys in the carriage, Tess helped Philip mend his kite. Her fingers trembled, and she knew it had not been only the need to hurry that had made her so clumsy on the steps and now here in the carriage. Unlike Cameron, penting up her emotions made her shake as if with a fever. This trip to Mr. Wainger’s house must be brief, because she wanted to return to her rooms and let the heat of her tears scorch away this pain in the very center of her heart.
“Are you all right?” Donald asked.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
He reached up and touched her cheek. “You are crying, Aunt Tess.”
“Something must have gotten in my eye.” She wiped away the tears. She must conceal any sign of them. Weeping could cause Cameron to withdraw even further from her. “I will be fine.”
Donald started to ask another question, but the carriage suddenly rocked to the side. Both boys grabbed her arms. She pulled them close as she looked out the window. She could not see anything at first. Then a gray horse raced too close to the carriage, cutting it off.
The coachee shouted as he tried to turn the carriage before it struck the horse and rider. It lurched again, out of control.
Pulling Donald into the crook of one arm, Tess reached for Philip with the other. He slid out away from her outstretched fingers as the carriage tipped wildly, then bounced like a child’s ball. The wheels struck something. Wood splintered, and the carriage tilted again. This time, it did not right itself.
“Philip!” she screamed as she slanted over Donald, trying to protect him as a wheel snapped and the back left corner of the carriage slammed into the ground. Everything in the basket flew. Mrs. Detloff’s scissors! Would they strike one of the boys? She ducked her head as she shouted Philip’s name again.
The door was torn open before Tess realized the carriage had come to a stop. The coachman peered in. “Your Grace, are you unharmed?”
“Donald and I are. Philip?” she called.
A shadow moved at the far side of the almost upended carriage. Philip let out a screech when she reached for him, and she saw his arm was hanging at an odd angle.
“Help me get him out,” Tess said.
The tiger assisted the coachee, who lifted Donald out of the wobbly carriage. Tess stood to one side, comforting Donald. As soon as Philip was out of the carriage, she sent the tiger running back toward the house to have a doctor waiting.
Coughing as dust swirled up from where the carriage had hit the walkway, Tess picked up Philip. He wept softly against her shoulder as he cradled his right arm in his left hand.
“Can I call for a chair for you?” the coachman said, anxiously glancing over his shoulder. She knew he wanted to tend to his horses, checking for injuries and calming them before a crowd could gather.
“Yes, thank you.”
As the coachman went to tend to his horses, a form came from the other direction through the dust. She was about to open her mouth to cry out in fear when she heard a familiar voice ask, “Tess, whatever were you doing in this carriage?”
Tess was relieved to see that the man stepping from the clouds of dust was her father. What was he doing here? It did not matter. He was here when she needed help. “Papa! Did you see the rider who …?”
Sickness sifted through her stomach when she saw the horse her father was leading. It was the gray that had been ridden with neck-or-nothing speed toward the carriage.
“Tess, I did not mean to put you in danger,” her father said, his face the same shade as his horse.
“Then whom did you intend to put in danger?” She answered her own question before he could. “You were trying to drive the carriage off the road because you believed Cam was in it?”
“Of course not. Do not be silly.” He flicked dust from his coat. “I worked hard to make sure you wed Hawksmoor and became a duchess, Tess. I would have been a fool to let all my hard work go for naught because of—”
When he reached for Donald, Tess stepped between him and the boy. “Do not touch him!”
The coachee came around the carriage and choked, “It was you! You cut us off and drove us into that tree.”
“Your head is addled, my good man. I am the duchess’s father. I would not risk my dear daughter’s life.”
Tess ignored her father’s smooth answer. Mayhap her head was the one that had been struck hardest on the side of the carriage, but it seemed to have given her a clarity of vision she had not had since she woke with Cameron in her bed.
“Not my life,” she said. “You were trying to kill Donald and Phili
p.”
“Tess, you are becoming hysterical.”
She backed away from him as she saw him reach under his coat. When he withdrew a dueling pistol, the coachman drew in his breath with a hiss.
“Papa, what are you doing?” she cried.
“Finishing what I started when I learned your husband’s father was dead.” He spat on the ground. “Finally he was on his way to burn in hell.”
“But the duke was your friend!”
“Once.” Her father’s mouth grew straight. “Until the night he belittled me at our club by suggesting I was a leech preying on my betters. Doors that had been open to me before were instantly closed, and I was utterly humiliated. I vowed he would pay and pay me well. When he died before the debt could be evened, his heir inherited the debt. I found a way for him to repay it when I chanced upon a carriage accident much like this one.”
“When Russell died?”
He laughed. “No, he escaped the other one. He and Knox both escaped, but the ladies they were with—ladies of quality who were married to very powerful men—were not so lucky. It became imperative that it not be known either the new duke or Knox was involved in the accident. They paid me well to keep my mouth shut.”
“Paid?” She drew Donald away from her father one step, then another. “You lied to me. You said Eustace Knox was blackmailing you.”
“It was actually quite the reverse.” Cameron came around the side of the coach. Tess barely recognized him. His face was taut with rage, and his hands were fisted at his sides. “You were extorting money from both my brother and Eustace, Masterson, bleeding every penny from them until they were forced to do your abominable bidding. Otherwise you would have spilled the truth. First, you took my brother’s dream along with his gray stallion. Then you forced Eustace to bring me to your house along with some drugged wine so you could have me married to your daughter.”
Tess gasped. It all fit so well, but she did not want to believe it. Papa had done all this? Just to even an insult?
When Cameron moved closer to her father, she wanted to cry out a warning. Didn’t he see the gun her father was holding? She did not dare to speak, fearing anything she said might be the impetus for Papa to fire that gun.
Cameron did not look at her as he said, “Eustace became tired of your greed and your determination to have your grandson obtain my father’s title. After he came to my house—upon your orders—with doctored wine after Lord Peake’s party, he was sickened by his own part in your scheme. That was when he devised the rumor that my brother married Donald’s mother. He decided to force your hand.”
“There will be no need to prove or disprove any rumors when there are no competitors for your title.” He raised the gun, pointing it at Donald.
“No!” Tess cried, stepping in front of the little boy.
Her voice was lost beneath a shout—not hers, nor the boys’. Cameron’s!
He launched himself at her father. He knocked the gun from her father’s hand, then slammed her father up against the carriage, striking him once, then again. Only the coachman running up to him halted him from hitting Papa a third time.
Cameron shoved the coachee away and whirled back to her father, who had slumped to the ground. Grasping Papa by the lapels, he lifted him and shoved him against the carriage.
“No!” Tess shouted again. She handed Philip to the coachman, who was staring at Cameron in disbelief. She ran to Cameron and seized his arm. “Don’t! You will kill him.”
“And save the hangman his prize,” he snarled.
“No,” she cried. “If you kill him, you will hang, too.”
“I don’t care.”
She put her hands on either side of his face and turned it toward her. His eyes were wild with unfettered fury. She quailed before it, for she had never seen its like. This was the wild anger Cameron had fought to hide.
But it was part of the man she loved, and she would not be frightened by anything about him again. She took his face in her hands again as she whispered, “Cam, I love you. I want you with me, not at the end of a hempen noose.”
He shook her off, but she refused to be pushed aside. Again she turned his face toward her.
“I love you, Cam. Let the hate go, and tell me you love me, too.”
He released her father and pulled her into his arms. His kiss was as untamed as the fire in his eyes. She reveled in the passions she had known were deep within him—awesome, overmastering passions she wanted to share.
Shouts came from every direction, and Cameron stepped back. He kept his arm around her waist as a trio of men she did not know surrounded her father. When Cameron whispered they were Bow Street Runners, she hid her face on his shoulder, not wanting to see the end to this debacle.
“Tess!” shouted her father.
She knew she could not let her own delusions keep her from confronting the truth. Looking up, she said, “Papa, I thought you loved me, but you used me.”
“I did this for you. You are now a duchess.”
“No, Papa, you did this for yourself. You left me living frugally and all alone in the country, watching my beloved home fall into ruins, while you enjoyed your ill-gotten money here in Town. You did not do any of this for me.” She walked to where the boys were watching, wide-eyed, as people paused to gawk at the broken carriage.
A chair appeared, and the coachman put Philip and Donald into it. Cameron waved for them to leave for Grosvenor Square. “I will bring Her Grace.”
The coachee, leading the horses, followed the chair.
Ignoring the crowd, Cameron steered Tess to where his own horse waited. He stopped and sighed, the incredible fury gone from his voice. “Tess, I am sorry it had to end like this.”
“Sorry? You saved me from my own father’s treachery.” She shivered, then whispered, “I hated your father for persuading you, you should never let anyone get under your skin and anger you or let someone’s kindness touch you. I thought he had destroyed your life. ’Twas my own father who was out to destroy not just my life, but yours, too.”
“Tess, forget that.”
“Forget it?”
He gripped her shoulders. “Tess, I am so sorry I lost my temper.”
“You had every cause.” She smiled. “Now that you have unleashed your feelings, Cam, do not put them away again. They are fearsome, but they are you. And I want to love every part of you, not just the man who controls all his emotions with such ease.”
“As you can see, it is not with such ease.” He stroked her shoulders. “The first day we were wed, you said something to your father I wished you would say to me now.”
“What?”
“That one forgives those one loves. I could not forget that.”
“Why would that remain in your mind when you hated me?”
He shook his head as he framed her face with gentle hands. “Sweetheart, I have never hated you, even though I must own I hated the idea of being married to you.”
“Honest as always.” She smiled, sure her heart would burst with joy.
“Honest as always.”
“I will be glad to forgive you anything.” She chuckled.
“Anything?”
“Almost anything.” She curved her hand along his cheek. “And will you be as honest with me about one other thing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate being married to me?”
He drew her closer. “No, I have not hated being married to you for a long time.”
“But you kept the papers that Mr. Paige gave you.”
“Papers?”
“I saw them in the account book in your room the day you told me about your brother’s death.”
He thought for a moment, then laughed. “I was using that folded letter from Paige for a marker as I went through Russell’s accounts, trying to figure them out. The rest of his papers were thrown away the day after he had them delivered to me in hopes I would change my mind about divorcing you.”
“So you don’t want to
divorce me?”
With a growl, he tugged her up against him. “Why would I want to divorce you? I love you, and I will never give you cause to divorce me.” He chuckled. “Nor shall I let you give me cause to seek a divorce from you.”
“And just how do you intend to do that?”
He answered her with his lips over hers. The gentleness vanished into the desire that had waited so long and now would be so sweet.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Jo Ann Ferguson
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0917-1
Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution
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His Unexpected Bride Page 22
